


Alouette, gentille alouette

by jenesaisquoi



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Gen, Leviathans, Psychological Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-26
Updated: 2013-10-26
Packaged: 2017-12-30 12:15:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1018486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jenesaisquoi/pseuds/jenesaisquoi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The child sings a song of plucking the feathers from a lark in retribution. The Leviathan refuse to let Castiel out of the confines of his own mind, forced to relive the moment of his greatest weakness.</p><p>[Not really graphic for the most part, but just in case.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Alouette, gentille alouette

**Author's Note:**

> It's nearly Halloween! 
> 
> I like to think that Castiel still carries around lingering baggage of his past before the events of Supernatural that still weigh on him. Especially now that he has a different perspective with which to see things.
> 
> The song, in the original french, makes an appearance but luckily wiki provides a translation so I don't have to.  
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alouette_(song)#Lyrics

_Alouette, gentille alouette._

The child’s voice flows into his mind, echoes around. He sees the little boy in a corner of the darkened room, hunched up, squatting in the way only children appreciate.

_Alouette, je te plumerai._  

The little boy, dressed in rags, drags a stick through the dirt and grime on the floor. Light in the room comes only from what the overcast sky allows of the sun. It’s a dungeon, he realizes. No, not a dungeon. A cell yes, but one with a small window in the ceiling.

_Je te plumenai la tête. Et la tête! Et la tête!_  

When is he? Castiel wonders. Certainly the present day, but for an angel the present day holds little definition. The child looks as if he’s from the French Revolution, unlike the air, the air smells like the twenty-third century. Who is this child?

_Alouette! Alouette!_

Heaven is silent.

_Alouette, gentille alouette._

The door opens with a loud clanking, the creak jarring with the mumble of the child’s song.

“Castiel.”

He stays silent.

“No doubt you have questions as you do every time,” the man’s voice is a quiet rasp, so at odds with the face he wears. Castiel knows that face.

_Alouette, je te plumerai.  
_

He glares at the man in the tailored suit. Looks with the unfathomable eyes of angels and sees the face of Jimmy Novak.

_Je te plumerai les yeux.  
_

The little boy is Claire Novak, watching him from the corner. He can feel his vessel react, blood pumping in his ears. The thump, thump of its heart. He is getting hotter, nervous, sweaty. The angel’s stomach begins to knot.

_Je te plumerai le bec._

“Et les yeux, et le bec, et la tête, alouette,” Claire Novak sings. Jimmy Novak hums along. 

“Le Havre 1643. You heard the song float up into heaven,” Jimmy Novak rasps, sounding like he’s pushing the air through his lungs. “A dirty little boy in rags mutters it through gritted teeth as the stone he throws hits his mark. Down goes the lark.”

There is a cold smile on the lips of his vessel’s twin. 

_Je te plumerai le cou._

“I’ll pluck your neck, you dirty bird!” Jimmy Novak shouts. “In that moment, you hated the boy. How dare he defile a winged creature that soars through the air, while this filthy vagrant could only ever hope to crawl through the mud.”

Castiel wishes he can’t breath, but oh his body will not be so kind. Short, gasping inhales as he tries to contain it all. Where is he? Swallow. Remember to swallow. He is in the future. Gulp in air. He is in the present. Deep breaths. He has control. 

“You’re no where, Castiel, but inside your own decaying grace.”

Jimmy Novak’s skin cracks and black leaks out the fissures. 

“You’ve no where to go, Castiel. Like a little boy in rags all those long, long seconds ago.”

“Not again,” Castiel hears himself whine.

_Je te plumerai le dos._

He standing on a cobblestone street. The smell of fish hangs heavy in the air, unpleasant, lingering along the docks of the French harbour. A boy huddles under a narrow room. The rain cascades down, as if the heavens themselves weep for man, for the vagrants, for a little boy with no home.

One angel does not weep. Sits atop his lofty perch in the clouds and sees only the ugliness of man. 

_Je te plumerai les pattes._

Castiel hears the boy sing, his voice growing deeper. When he next looks over there is a man under the narrow roof. Handsome, glowing with brilliance. He is glorious from the inside out and righteousness bursts forth from his eyes.

“I’m going to pluck you like a goose for dinner, Cas,” Dean growls out in his Kansas drawl. “Really show you the ugliness of humans then.”

“No,” Castiel whispers. “Dean, it was a moment of weakness. To see my father’s creation torn apart by the ones he loves so much.”

“You’re just like the rest of the angels.”

“You didn’t see the malice in his heart, Dean.” Castiel closes his eyes, pained by the brilliance of Dean. “There was no reason, no demon, no evil, no anger.”

He looks to the sky and feels the tears mingle with the rain.

“He wanted nothing more than to dominate, to tear the lark apart and make it suffer.”

“And why not?” Dean shouts, he hates when Dean shouts. “To be stuck on the ground, _forced_ to crawl through mud when all he wants is to fly away like the bird, on a whim. Why didn’t God give humans wings?”

“My father gave humans so much more, Dean,” Castiel says patiently. “Even now you take to the skies in wonders of human creation.”

“Some of us are still forced to crawl through the mud, Cas.”

“That is humanity’s doing, Dean!” He roars. “An absent father does not allow for an easy path to cruelty.”

“And yet here you are.”

“Dean.”

“It’s not humans who let out the Leviathan is it?”

Castiel says nothing, has no answer to this biting jab.

“The angel who was supposed to love humanity the most got into bed with a demon and doomed us all. What was that about not justifying an easy path to cruelty?”

“I could not have known of the Leviathan. They are not an innocent lark who takes to the sky in contentment only to be smashed down by a child.”

“Save it, Cas.”

“Dean, for once let me explain!” But there is no one who stands with him in the rain anymore.

_Je te plumerai la queue, et la queue!_

Claire Novak sings, once again, a young girl in a white dress. There is a bitter taste in Castiel’s mouth, a ringing in his ears, a dry choking lump in his throat.

“Alouette, gentille alouette,” Jimmy Novak rasps, a strange vibration to his voice. Castiel feels it reverberate through his chest.

He sees Jimmy Novak, devoted father, extend his hand. Everything stops, frozen in a moment of suspended animation, just waiting for the tip that will send everything crashing over. He closes his eyes. Not again.

_Je te plumerais les ailes._

Jimmy Novak’s raspy whisper reaches his right ear. In his left, he can hear the steady rhythm of a heart pumping through the walls that swell in time. Castiel closes his eyes, breaths deep and tries to push away the nausea. The hot prickle of a panic attack makes its way across his skin. There is a rumbling from outside the walls, an atonal swell creeping up.

There is a crack of thunder and Jimmy Novak’s burnt face is directly in front of his.

“I’ve been chained to a comet, Castiel,” Jimmy Novak exaggerates his name. The pent up rage rolls off him in waves, hitting Castiel with the stench of hatred.

He tries not to breath as the burning flesh that peels of Jimmy Novak’s face lands on the lapels of his coat, unable to move now that his body is frozen.

“Little Skylark, I’ll pluck your feathers off,” Jimmy Novak says and reaches behind Castiel. 

There is a moment where his senses fail him, everything is dark, silent, empty; no taste, no touch, no smell. Slowly a scream builds in the distance, closer, closer. It begins to make its way up his throat, through his limbs, and forces itself out his mouth.

Jimmy Novak stands in front of him, one hand holding a mess of bloody black feathers while the other continues to tear into his wings. Castiel whimpers, tries to wrap himself in his frayed grace and finds a moment of clarity through the pain. His grace comes like individual twine, pulling from the walls like so many webs. There is no escape when one is inside one’s mind, trapped in the grace that keeps him alive. The Leviathan will never let him leave so long as they control the body and so he remembers how must watch, every day, as the little boy destroys the lark.

Jimmy Novak’s face twists and morphs as it always does. Now Dean tears into his wings, his grace. Pulls fine threads, then whole chunks and Castiel can do nothing but scream and scream. He begs for forgiveness that will not come.

Claire Novak sings in the corner.

_Alouette, gentille alouette.  
_ _Alouette, je te plumerai._

**Author's Note:**

> I seem to have a habit of straying into supernatural, especially Castiel, when listening to French songs. Though, how could one listen to Gentille Alouette and not think of Castiel? It's a surprisingly morbid children's song, so this ended up taking a rather creepy turn.
> 
> I've always found the best horror stories to be those where you only get hints of the whole story. Here's hoping this got it right.
> 
> I hope it was enjoyable!


End file.
